Tomorrow, Retire Dick Lugar

I really do adore Peggy Noonan. I respect her opinion and I love her writing. I take issue with her support of Richard Lugar, however.Peggy Noonan writes that Indiana should “save the old guy. He has value.” She also says Washington needs grown ups and “we need mature folk involved in our governance, people for whom not everything is new.”With respect, Mr. Lugar has no more value. He and his cohorts have given all the value to China.Richard Lugar has been in Washington since January of 1977. I was one. The federal debt was approximately $650 billion. The federal debt now surpasses $15 trillion. And you know what? The grown ups did it. The grown ups, the mature folks, the adults in the room were the ones who did it. Richard Lugar was complicit in this catastrophic balance sheet. He rarely stood in the way of an increase in debt, an increase in spending, a bridge to nowhere, and a future to bankruptcy.While Richard Lugar was joining the other grown ups in raiding the treasury for pet projects, Richard Mourdock was first in the private sector, then became Indiana’s State Treasurer. He fought the Obama Administration’s GM bankruptcy. He fought the Obama Administration on Obamacare. He helped Indiana balance its books.The two men are both adults. Richard Mourdock’s parents are both World War II veterans. Yes, his father and his mother. He knows what sacrifice is like. He knows what hard work is like. And he knows that just as his parents quite literally fought for a better world, he must too.In Washington, “adult” is the term of art for the men and women who reach across the aisle. They cut deals. They save face. They make government work. In their zeal to make government work, the perverse reverse has happened. We now work for the government. We sustain the leviathan. Our children’s children’s children will pay off the debt Richard Lugar helped incur.I’d prefer it if we stopped sending his ilk to Washington to keep incurring debts for my children and grand children in the name of being grown up.